I thought I would let Tyler tell about the race in his own words, since he is the one who actually did the race:
"This last weekend was LOTOJA. (September 12th)
That’s the 206 mile Race from Logan to Jackson (Teton Village).
It’s the longest single day race in America.
LOTOJA is a little funny because registration fills up so fast.
Registration opens in April which is still fairly early in the season.
So, it is always a little tough to know what category to sign up for.
I was optimistic that I would have a good season and be able to upgrade my category, so I signed up for a tougher category this year.
The good thing is that I reached my goals and was able to move up.
The bad news is that I knew the race would be harder and faster.
We had a real good team this year with some strong riders. Our biggest competitors also had a strong team.
We had 9 guys from our team (Skull Candy) in the same category and the other big team (Spin) had 8.
Besides our 2 teams, most of the other competitors were in smaller teams of 5 or fewer.
So, the race was set up to be a good one. We knew a little of what Spin was planning to do, so we had to make plans of our own.
Spin was planning to ride steady and fast and attack hard on the last of the three major climbs.
To counter their moves and throw them off a bit, we planned to attack on the 2nd major climb.
Well, the wild card was another team with only 2 riders (Bikers Edge). They attacked fairly hard on the 1st major climb.
Unfortunately, their move broke the group up pretty good. Luckily, I was able to match their moves and stay with them.
However, the acceleration on the climb dropped the rest of my team.
So, here I am only 50 miles into the race with no teammates……bummer!
I was now in the lead group of 10 but the lead group consisted mostly of Spin Guys, and Bikers Edge Guys ……Not good….
On the second climb everyone worked together and there were no major attacks.
On the third climb the pace started off slow and I ended up off the front with about a minute or two lead.
I wasn’t interested in riding off the front solo as there were still 90+ miles to go.
So, I backed off and let the group catch back up.
From there on, we worked really well as a group.
Eventually 2 of the 10 fell behind but the remaining 8 of us stayed together to the finish (4 Spin, 2 Bikers Edge, 1 Skull Candy and 1 Fast Fridays).
About 10 miles from the finish Spin and Bikers edge started to conspire to set up for the sprint.
Not good for the guy without any teammates…ME.
It was a fast furious sprint finish…..I think when we crossed the line we were going over 35mph.
I am not a great sprinter, but I hung in there and took 5th. Only 0.8 seconds off the winner.
In fact there was only about 1.5 seconds separating 1st from 8th.
In this race they give out awards to the top 5, so I was still able to squeak onto the lowest tier of the podium.
It was a fun race this year and definitely my best performance.
My time was just over 9hrs 28 minutes.
That put me into 29th place overall out of 1059 racers.
Not too shabby for an “old” guy with kids, a job and a mortgage.
I beat my previous best time by about 29 minutes.
Mandy and Finley came along for support.
They did a great job handing up food and water along the way.
According to Mandy, Finley was smiling and happy the whole time (or asleep).
The only real rough patch was when we had a fire in our Hotel….but that is another story.
Caleb and Holden ended up having a fun weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Bice.
They went to the state fair and Holden tagged along with Grandpa on some scouting stuff.
LOTOJA is tough, but I still think 1000 Warriors was harder.
1000 Warriors is shorter, but the climbs are far tougher and the hot weather was a huge factor.
It took me a while to recover from 1000 Warriors, I am already starting to feel OK from LOTOJA."
All bright eyed and bushy tailed for their 6:37 am start time
